The United Nations deputy chief has said that collective global action is needed to overcome barriers to implementation of States’ legal commitments to protect populations from atrocity crimes – the principle known as ‘responsibility to protect’ or R2P. ‘We have seen concrete implementation plans to make the ‘responsibility to protect’ a living reality,’ Deputy Secretary-General [...]

KARACHI: As Muslims worldwide have just performed another Haj and are now celebrating Eidul Azha, it is perhaps an opportune moment to reflect on the current state of that abstract construct – the ‘Muslim world’. While, indeed, the world as a whole is facing myriad challenges to the global order – political, financial, security etc [...]

UNTIL recently, Pakistan was home to the largest refugee population. For decades, the country won much praise for giving sanctuary to vulnerable people who had to flee their homes. When far wealthier countries showed a callous indifference towards those people seeking safety – tightening border controls while pleading lack of capacity – the example of [...]

On August 17, more than 40 days after the start of the latest wave of brutal Indian repression of the Kashmiris, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, made a startling statement that his “sincere attempts to independently access the facts in relation to reports of human rights violations have failed” since his [...]

WHY do terrorists choose to strike soft targets? The conventional answer would be because they feel hitting hard targets is becoming increasingly difficult. So what constitutes a ‘soft target’? Security experts are trying to understand the issue of soft targets from a variety of perspectives. There are still many unanswered questions. For instance, do terrorists [...]

Earlier this month, a video clip of an Israeli soldier snatching a bicycle from a Palestinian girl went viral on social media. From the footage one can hear the eight-year-old crying while another soldier throws her bicycle into the bushes. Prior to that, in February this year, another video of an Israeli soldier tipping over [...]

Asianet Pakistan Private Limited Introduction and overview The Arab Spring began in late 2010 in Tunisia where a local protest got converted into a mass movement against the decades-old regime of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. A domino effect followed in several other Arab countries, where the public was emboldened by the success of [...]